


Not Only Bound

by hithelleth



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, F/M, Future Fic, Multi, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-10
Updated: 2013-08-10
Packaged: 2017-12-23 01:00:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/920126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hithelleth/pseuds/hithelleth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They share the past, the present and, perhaps, the future.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Only Bound

**Author's Note:**

  * For [angelette](https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelette/gifts).
  * Translation into Magyar available: [Nem csak összekötve](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2086314) by [a walking Babel fish (angelette)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelette/pseuds/a%20walking%20Babel%20fish)



_If you don’t know the reason for doing something, then why are you doing it?_

For Elena, it has never been _why_ , but _who; who_ was she doing what she was doing for? Now, however, the answer to _who_ is _no one_. And Elena has enough of it: the supernatural claiming her for its own devices, the Salvatore brothers’ never-ending tug-of-war despite their truces and deals and promises, Caroline’s optimism that things will get “back to normal” (when Elena doubts there has ever been any “normal” to go back to in the first place), everyone’s expectations of her to be what _they_ want her to be.

Elena packs up in the morning, only the basics and some memorabilia, and leaves a note for Caroline, saying she will be out late, studying in the library. When Caroline finds it in the evening, Elena is already on the other side of the Atlantic.

She expects – fears, perhaps a part of her even hopes – that someone will find her or stumble upon her and drag her back into the mess that means being Elena Gilbert.

No one does. She stops expecting (fearing, wishing).

Elena travels the world, lives here and there and everywhere for as many years as she can without people noticing her not aging, makes friends, takes lovers, and lies, lies, lies, pretending to be human while she almost exclusively drinks bagged blood.

Sometimes she slips, feeds on people, kills.

Years go by, then decades.

***

The pull to go back is sudden, urgent, and irresistible.

Elena drives a rented car into Mystic Falls on May 23rd.

The tombstones in the cemetery are weathered, but the inscriptions are still legible. She sits there – for how long she can’t say; time is indefinite, insignificant for her now – and later wanders into the woods.

At nightfall she stops at the edge of a shallow valley.

One moment she is alone, the next there is a presence nearby, appearing too quietly even for her vampire hearing. She stays as she was, for there is no need for fear – had he wanted, she could have already been dead without even knowing it.  

“Hello, sweetheart.”

The voice is familiar – cool, with a distinct accent.

“What do you want, Klaus?”

Klaus doesn’t respond, but comes to stand behind her. He brushes her hair away from her right shoulder. His fingers linger over her skin where his fangs tore into it, drawing life from her veins with a hunger for all that it would give him – vengeance, distinction, invincibility – and for that which it couldn’t – acceptance, family, love. Yet, the hold of his arms was as gentle as if they were laying a baby to rest. A rest she wasn’t sure she would wake up from.

“I should have died,” Elena thinks out loud.

Klaus follows her eyes down into the basin beneath their feet. In almost a century trees have grown and fallen, but the place is etched into her memory: the flaming circles and the roaring of the wind, mixed with words of enchantment.

_Can he still taste her blood in his mouth or feel the grip of Elijah’s hand around his heart?_

Klaus scoffs, as if he read her mind.

“So should I.”

She turns her head, glimpsing something similar to regret on his grim face before it is replaced by his perpetual ever-so-slightly-mocking expression.

“Now, if we are going to reminisce about good old times and death and such, I suggest we do that over a drink.” He offers her his hand. “Come on, love, there’s still a pub down in the town and everyone that could recognise us from the last time either of us was here is most certainly dead.”

The last part should have hurt her, whether it was intended to or was just a careless remark.  

 _Drinking with him is the last thing she would do and he can go to hell._ The words dissolve just as quickly as they form in her head.

She places her hand in his.

***

A pub, as Klaus calls it, is where The Grill used to be, only with a different name, new furniture, repainted walls.

 “When I said I should have died, I meant… before that.” They sit at a table in the corner, a bottle of bourbon between them short of a couple of shots they have already downed.

Klaus simply shrugs. “That would have been rather inconvenient for me.”

“I suppose it would. Although, you still didn’t get quite what you’d wanted.”

“Touché.” Klaus raises his glass to her before throwing it back.

The night gets late while Klaus alternately makes sarcastic comments which are meant to be funny – Elena actually laughs once or twice – or brings up aching reminders of the past which Elena washes down with bourbon and gets right back at him, though only once or twice a shade of hurt springs to life behind the mask of indifference he’s wearing.

The later it gets the less can Elena ignore the thumping of too many heartbeats composing a melody of their own, interweaving with the music playing over the speakers. The air is full of scents: perfume, sweat, sex and blood – most of all blood. The mixture stirs a dark want in Elena, the want for blood – she hasn’t fed all day – and something else.

She licks the tips of her fangs, which doesn’t go unnoticed.

“We could have a feast.” Klaus looks pointedly around the bar, a predatory glint in his eyes.

Elena frowns and shoots him what she hopes is a disproving look, swallowing when her mouth waters.

Klaus smirks. “Or, shall we leave?”

That is a much better idea. “Yes,” Elena agrees all too fast.  After a beat, she adds: “I think this evening has been long enough.”

She doesn’t have time to deal with a sudden reluctance to end the night that comes over her or with a somehow unpleasant thought of returning to her car and empty one or two blood bags from the cooler in the trunk.

Outside Klaus slams her against a wall and grabs her head with both hands, crushing their mouths together. 

Elena snarls against his tongue and digs her fingers into his shoulders, pulling him closer, her nails tearing through his shirt to open crescent wounds on his skin, however temporary. It’s not enough, his tongue plundering her mouth; she fights it back, but only to do the same to him, pushing past his lips, feeling the sharp edges of his teeth, biting into the corner of his mouth.

Klaus tears himself away with a growl.

“That’s a dangerous game you’re playing, love.”

As if she could forget. But at the moment she doesn’t care. “Fuck you.”

“Oh, I intend to.”

He pulls her to him, speeding them away, a hush of the wind in the night they are, no more.

Then there is solid ground beneath her back, the smell of squashed grass in her nostrils, Klaus’ weight on her, their hands rough on each other, ripping their clothes off.

Klaus takes her hard and fast, pulling at her hair as she carves lines of red into his back with her nails. The movements of their bodies and the mix of dirt and grass and blood are intoxicating, yet Elena wants still more, more of – what she realises when Klaus’ lips slide over her neck – his bite would be deadly, and yet a moan escapes her, pleading him to do it. He raises his head only to catch her eyes, before he drops his mouth to her skin again. 

The pain is nothing now, compared to a memory, and yet in spite of or precisely because of it, a delicious jolt runs through Elena’s body when his fangs pierce her flesh, each gulp of blood Klaus draws taking her higher and higher.

She throws her head aside, her parted lips brushing against Klaus’ arm propped on the ground. Her fangs, just millimetres from the vein, elongate reflexively.

”Do it.” Klaus grunts through his bite, without letting go.

His blood is warm and sweet, the last component that makes her lose it, pressing his wrist to her mouth, sipping the rich red fluid while her body convulses in violent pleasure and Klaus thrusts brutally into her for the last few times before he finishes, pinning them both to the ground so hard their bodies might leave a print in the soil.

***

Elena showers at the Mikaelson mansion – as it turns out, Klaus still owns it – and puts on a clean dress. It’s one of Rebekah’s – old, but quality-made and well-preserved – that she left behind a few decades ago; “after the football captain’s funeral,” Klaus provides, “Bekah is sentimental like that.”

“Take care, love,” he says, seeing her out, “I’m sure we’ll run into each other again.”

“I’m sure we will.”

They don’t say goodbye.

Elena goes back to Europe, vanishing in the anonymity of the eastern countries, moving through Bulgaria, Ukraine, Russia. She catches a sight of Klaus in the crowd in Moscow, but he is gone in an instant.

She defies her dislike of cold and explores Scandinavia, finding out she enjoys the tranquillity of the North.

In a decade and a half she ends up in England.

England is mellow, temperate. Elena has been there before, early after leaving the States, too wary to savour it the way she can now.

It is an evening like many others when Elena, walking along the riverbank in one of those towns rich with history and culture, stops mid-step. She could turn around – not that it would be of any use, because she has already been noticed – but she decides not to. 

He keeps his eyes on her as she approaches, as if he were reading the story of the years passed in each of her steps.

“Elena.”

“Elijah.” Her voice is just a little breathless when she smiles in response.

“Would you care to join me?” He gestures to the bench beside him, reaching out his hand, and she takes it.

“I’d love to.”

He doesn’t let go of her hand as she sits down beside him and the warmth of his grasp wraps around Elena like a cloud.

They sit quietly for a while, people walking past them and the river, glowing in the fading light, waking memories – distant, yet still so very alive – in Elena’s mind, probably in Elijah’s as well.

_Elena saw terror written all over Rose’s face – no, all over her body: her composure, her moves, her non-breathing – and heard it in her voice. In comparison, the sight of Trevor’s head falling off was so surreal and done with such ease Elena didn’t feel anything about it until much later._

The man beside her is the most fearsome creature on Earth, one with whom they have forged alliances and dishonoured them with betrayals, and yet Elena isn’t afraid now. After all, it was around the first time she met Elijah when she started getting used to fear. It soon felt like a second skin.

“Will you have a civil dinner with me, Elena? To catch up?” Elijah breaks the silence.

“That would be nice. But aren’t you caught up already?”

“I might be, to an extent. But I’d rather hear your stories from you.”

So they have dinner – more than a civil one – a pleasant meal during which they forget the time while talking.

Elena acts on impulse as they leave the restaurant, not ready to say goodbye yet for who knows how long again, standing up on her toes, her hand on Elijah’s shoulder. He must guess her intention and steps back, avoiding the contact.

Elena can’t hide her disappointment as she turns away quickly, clearing her throat, trying to think of saying something to lessen the awkwardness.

“Elena.” Elijah catches her elbow, making her look at him. “I would like to show you my home, that is, if you want.”

This time it is relief Elena doesn’t even think of hiding.

“Yes, I’d like that.”

They drive half an hour out of town. Elijah turns from the road through a gate in the fence and after another turn a building comes into view.

“The lord of the castle,” Elena says, “just what I thought.”

“It is actually a manor.”

“Only.”

Elijah chuckles. “Only.”

The place is a perfect reflection of him, moulded ceilings and wooden floors, paintings on the walls – undoubtedly originals, modern appliances and a tasteful combination of antique and contemporary furniture.  

Elijah abandons his gentlemanly ways when they exit the library on the second floor, pinning her against the doorframe.

“The last time – the first time – we kissed… I wasn’t myself.” She was a stone being kissed, the experience purely sensory, without emotion.   

“But you are yourself now,” Elijah states.

“Yes, I am.”

“Well then.”

And he kisses her breath away (or so he would, were she human).

The rest is a blur of motion, fast alternating with slow: rushing to the bedroom; peeling off their clothes inch by inch; their hands and lips gliding over each other’s skin, tasting and feeling; the accelerating pulse of blood in their veins as Elijah enters her, grabbing a handful of her hair as he picks up the pace and she digs her heels into his thighs, meeting his ever faster and harder thrusts until the world spins out of control and they fall apart, existing but for having each other in their arms.

Afterwards they lie facing each other while Elijah lazily plays with a strand of her hair.

He disappears for a few seconds, bringing each a glass of blood, which they drink and then settle back in bed.

Elijah drives her back into town in the morning. He opens the car door for her and waits for her to get out. He hesitates a moment, touching the side of her face.

“If you see my brother…” He chuckles when Elena bites her bottom lip.

“So you _are_ caught up,” she sighs.

“Niklaus likes to boast. And he has a reason to.” He kisses her, long and soft.

“Don’t be a stranger, Elena.”

She smiles. “I won’t.”

***

One or both Originals are never far away after that. It is a strangely comforting knowledge. They have obviously made peace with each other again, which doesn’t come as a surprise to Elena. Wouldn’t she do the same with her family, had she any left?

They remain unobtrusive, drifting on the edge of her horizon, always giving her a window of opportunity, a choice to decide whether to acknowledge their presence. She never chooses not to.

With Elijah, they discuss literature and history, go for walks in twilight, read curled up together, and make love at random parts of day.

Klaus challenges her with his unique views on art and philosophy, spiced up with snark and sarcasm – a cover for the loneliness lurking underneath, and takes her in the wilderness under the stars, brutally and sometimes desperately at once, even impossibly gently.

They hold on to the remnants of human habits, as a means of grounding themselves in the world,   such as dining together now and again – “a family dinner,” Klaus smirks while Elijah holds in a sigh and tells him to behave.

Klaus lures her on a hunt, commenting that “if I’d done as much slaughtering as you think, the supply would have run short by now,” as their compelled victims scamper away into the night. “Just keep it to yourself. I’ve got a reputation to uphold.”

***

“It doesn’t bother you,” Elena observes, snuggled against Elijah on the couch, a TV on and a book in her lap – though she isn’t paying attention to either. “Why?”

Elijah puts down the business papers he has been reading, studying her for a moment before he replies.  

“Why would it? When you choose me, you choose me; and when you choose Niklaus, you choose him. It’s your choice that makes it matter, in either case.”

“Or,” Klaus is suddenly leaning over the couch, “you could be greedy and choose us both.”

And as before, it is not a question of decision, because the choice is the simplest ever offered. Elena looks at Elijah, searching for his hand. He laces his fingers with hers and takes her in his arms as she twists his free hand into Klaus’ shirt, pulling him down for a kiss.

***

Klaus tests her, pushes her buttons, mentions Stefan and Caroline going to China and Damon turning Katherine (at which he laughs smugly) – and doesn’t accomplish anything – there is no sting, no regret for Elena and she wishes them well.

Elijah usually listens to their debates slightly amused, leaving them to settle it between themselves.

Rebekah waltzes in like a whirlwind, blows the dust from the hidden cracks, brings up Tatia and Katherine, and wishes them luck before taking off on her own again.

There is no dispute, no competition, because Elena is neither Tatia nor Katherine and she is done with lies and manipulation, and Elijah and Klaus do know that loving two people does not mean either one being loved half-way, just the opposite.

They have all learned from the past and the mistakes they have made, and as Elijah points out – from a thousand plus years of experience – letting oneself be held back by the past is useless: people can take revenge or forgive, but they shouldn’t let any of it control them.

Between the three of them they share the savagery and the chivalry of the past, the present and, perhaps, the future. And by that they are no longer only bound, but liberated. 

***

~FIN~

**Author's Note:**

> Rendered with love. I hope you liked it.


End file.
